As Olympics near, Trump seeks to boost pressure on NKorea

President Donald Trump meets with North Korean defectors in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Feb. 2, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON — With just a week before the Olympic Games begin on the Korean peninsula, President Donald Trump on Friday sought to increase pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear program by consulting with allies and highlighting the human rights abuses suffered by defectors from North Korea.

Trump hosted about a half-dozen North Korean defectors in the Oval Office, including Ji Seong-ho, who had used crutches to escape the reclusive country after a train ran over his limbs. Days earlier, Ji raised his crutches in triumph when Trump singled him out during his State of the Union address.

Trump called the defectors "great people that have suffered incredibly.

"There were many, many others like them that have suffered so much," he said.

Among the others Trump hosted were Hyeonseo Lee, an author who wrote about her escape from North Korea and her life as a fugitive in China, and Young-soon Kim, who was imprisoned for nine years after learning of a friend's affair with Kim Jong-il, the former dictator and father of the nation's current leader.

Trump also called the leaders of South Korea and Japan on Friday to ask them to keep up the pressure. He suggested that recent communication between North Korea and South Korea, which is hosting the Olympics in Pyeongchang, was a positive development.

"They are in dialogue, at least as it concerns the Olympics, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing," Trump said.

The president avoided some of the inflammatory rhetoric he has used previously on North Korea, including threatening to unleash "fire and fury" on the rogue nation and dubbing their leader "Little Rocket Man."

Trump has expressed a willingness to deal with rising tensions through diplomacy, but he has said the United States would use military force on North Korea if needed.

He declared the standoff with the rogue regime "a tricky situation" and again blamed previous administrations for letting the crisis linger for decades.

"We have no road left, so we'll see what happens," Trump said. "We're going to find out how it goes. But we think the Olympics will go very nicely, and after that, who knows? We'll find out. We'll find out pretty soon, I suspect."